


The Same and Different

by Sassaphrass



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Asgard, Brotherly Affection, Brotherly Bonding, Brotherly Love, Bullying, Dysfunctional Family, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hair Braiding, Heimdall does not like Loki, Kid Fic, Kid Loki and Kid Thor (Marvel), Magic, No Incest, Odin (Marvel)'s A+ Parenting, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Protective Loki (Marvel), Thor (Marvel) is Not Stupid, Thor (Marvel) is a Good Bro, Thor is so done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 15:13:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14621372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sassaphrass/pseuds/Sassaphrass
Summary: For the last decade Loki has tried to hurt Thor at every turn. But for a millenia, they were as close as two brother's could be.It's hard to forget why you're supposed to hate a person when you're stuck on a spaceship with them and all they want to do is braid everyone's hair.





	1. Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Because Thor was like Frigga but he was Odin's favourite, and Loki was like Odin but he was Frigga's favourite.

For the last ten years Loki has thwarted, undermined and attacked his brother at every opportunity. He has told himself that he hates Thor for his ridiculous trusting nature, that his brother was an arrogant fool who deserved it.

  
It had been easy to forget that for more than a millennia Thor and Loki had been as close as two brothers could be. That they had played together, grown together and fought together. That not all of it had been bad.  
In truth, Loki had preferred to forget the softer times. It had made his hate easier, when he thought of Thor as the brutal bullying oaf of his young adult years instead of the grinning bright eyed boy from their childhood.

  
But, now crammed on this ship of half-familiar refugees, and having decided to do the unexpected and live a bit more nobly. Loki is at loose ends and it isn't so easy to forget.

  
He has no schemes to enact. The rations have been set, the quarters allocated and now there’s nothing to do but sit here and stare at the walls as the ship slowly wakes it’s way to Midgard.

  
Loki finds his thoughts constantly wandering back to their shared childhood. He’s not sure whether to blame that story Thor had told about the snake, or the lightning that crackles gently across his brother’s fingers. 

He’d forgotten that Thor loved snakes, and he’d forgotten the way Thor had often sent the nursery alight in dangerous blue light when they'd been tiny.

  
He stands by that ridiculous viewport and watches Thor in the reflection as he moves among the people in a way the Allfather never would have deigned to.

  
“And what are you up to Trickster?” a deep voice asks.

  
Loki frowns at Heimdall. “Thinking. Gatekeeper.”

  
“You shouldn’t. It has never served you well.”  
Loki glares but does not reply, He knows that Heimdall currently enjoys far more of Thor’s love and trust than Loki himself. He can't afford to make a scene.

  
“Well, maybe you can serve as my brains as you once often served as my father’s eyes. Tell me, I have been trying to remember when in our shared childhood my brother stopped throwing sparks?” Loki asks archly. He watches the Gatekeeper carefully because the shape of something has begun to take shape. A suspicion Loki doesn’t yet dare name.

  
Heimdall does not seem impressed by this sally. “You underestimate the peace of those early years if you think I had concentration to spare on two such young children. I don’t doubt your brother would remember though…why don’t you ask him?”

  
Loki rolls his eyes. “You overestimate the peace my brother now enjoys if you think I would trouble him with such frivolities.”

  
“On the contrary, I think it would warm him to remember more pleasant times.” Heimdall smiles at the point scored, and Loki huffs and looks away.

  
He only ever seemed to lose these bouts of verbal sparring when his opponent was the Gatekeeper.

  
He turns on his heel and walks away head held high, moving decisively so no one will realize that there is no one who beckons to him. No one who smiles and calls him over.

  
He had not always been friendless. Fandral and Volstagg used to like him quite a bit. Fandral had at times actually seemed to prefer him to Thor. Both dead now.

At least, they are not aboard the ship and so he must assume the worst.

And even if they had survived they would not have called him over or beckoned him to come and join them. They had not possessed Thor’s capacity for forgiveness and had not forgiven him for his Midgardian indiscretions or his attempt on Thor’s life. Not to mention that business with the Frost Giants…

  
He doesn’t like to think of them. It’s easier.

  
He’d like to rid himself of the specter of his brother during their shared childhood but that is proving a more difficult ghost to banish.

  
Especially considering that Thor insists on acting in the most unregal and immature manner he can manage in any given moment.

Loki blinks in surprise when he sees the King of Asgard sitting cross-legged and fixing a little girl’s hair.

It takes him a moment to recognize the child but when he does his stomach lurches sickeningly. It’s one of Volstagg’s girls, and her sisters are crowding around watching Thor’s hands closely.

  
“Father never did her hair like that.” one of them remarks, critically.

  
“Your father never learned. He was always so vain about his curls and would never have deigned to learn a style that did not allow him to highlight their glory.” Thor informs her seriously as he divides the hair and smoothes it with his fingers. “And he was much more practical than I was, and never grew it out so unmanageably long.”

  
“I can cut it.” The girl in front offers, “If it’s too much trouble.”

  
“It's no trouble at all. Long hair is simple enough to care for once you have the knack.” Thor says as he begins braiding. “The Allmother used to do it for me in a trice back when I was young and wore my hair long. It shouldn’t take you long to learn.”

  
Like the story with the snake it is something that Loki has not thought of in so long he would have imagined he’d forgotten it, but Thor says the words and suddenly it flashes before him: a vision of the past.

  
Thor, lanky and not-quit yet adolescent bounding through the palace with his hair bleached by the harsh sunlight of a recent vision to Alfheim, flowing behind him nearly down to his waist.

  
He’d wanted to be a Valkyrie, he and Lady Sif both, and so they’d grown their hair long and learned the sword and begged Loki to transform himself into a horse with wings.

Mother had loved Thor’s hair. She’d cooed over it and smiled at him and taught him cunning ways to wear it to show it off and keep it out of his face.

  
Loki shakes his head to dispel the memory and walks on, away into the dark abandoned corners of the ship with the bitter taste of jealousy and regret heavy on his tongue.

Loki seeks Thor out later, in his quarters an echo of that first night. Thor’s eyes are as distant and as cold as ever but Loki likes to think there’s a thawing there. That the trust they once shared might be rebuilt.

  
“I had forgotten that your hair once grew so long the Allmother had to step in to keep you from catching it on door handles and guard spears.” Loki murmurs as he slips quietly into the room

  
Thor leans back and doesn't ask what has reminded Loki of this fact. “You underestimate me once again brother. I grew my hair so long, because she’d step in."

  
Loki blinks. “Why?”

In his memories Thor and Frigga are not as close perhaps as Loki and Frigga, or Thor and Odin but they had in some ways been so much alike that they had seemed almost to move and think in synchronicity. Both golden and kind hearted and adored by everyone who knew them.

  
Certainly close enough that Thor didn't need to resort to excuses in order to spend time with her.

  
Thor sees Loki's expression and laughs. “I was jealous of you of course.”

  
Well, now Loki has to sit down. “Jealous of me?” He's not sure what part of that sentence is more ridiculous.

  
Thor shrugs. “You were her pet. She taught you her magic and she was always telling father how clever you were. She didn’t like my pursuits. I was too loud and too clumsy and she’d always tell me to go play in the gardens if I went to see her and her ladies, but if my hair was a unkept she’d call me over and let me sit with her while she fixed it. So…”

  
“I thought it was because you and Sif wanted to be Valkyries.”

  
“Of course it was partly because of that, but it was also a way to sit with Mother. To be of interest to her.”

  
“She only said I was clever because Odin thought so little of my magic.” Loki protests. 

Thor chuckles. “Yes, I know that know. I didn’t say I was still jealous of you. I know now you spent time with her because your temperaments were better suited, you had interests in common and you had fewer friends than I did.”

  
Loki frowns remembering some of th details of how those friends of Thor had behaved just a bit later.

  
“Yes, and those friends of yours tormented me mercilessly when you cut your hair on a whim and the fashions changed over night. Telling me I was frumpy and matronly.” 

Loki swallows at the memory, which shouldn’t still be painful all these centuries later but somehow still is. They had all cut their hair in imitation of Thor and had teased him mercilessly about his still being long. 

Thor looks at him as though he’s grown another head. “Loki, they tormented you because it was your tricks that got mine cut in the first place.”

  
“What?”

  
“You started sneaking up behind me and grabbing me by the hair and swinging me into walls, which admittedly was very funny, but Father thought it revealed a potential weakness in battle, and started telling everyone it should be cut and then one day you played some sort of prank involving pitch and I went to Mother to have her magic it out of my hair but Father was there and he wouldn’t hear of it and took me off to be shorn like a sheep.”

To Loki’s surprise Thor laughs at the memory.

“I was utterly inconsolable about the whole thing. Makes my reaction now look measured and reasonable, I went and found Sif and told her what happened, and she” he grins. “She ran and stole a pair of shears and hacked her hair off right away. Said we didn’t need it to be Valkyries and then she went and found Fandral and Volstagg cut their hair. Hogun found out the story the next day and came back from lunch with his hair short too.”

  
Loki blinks. He has never had a friend who would have taken his side so completely and so effectively as Sif had for Thor. But, then what had he ever done to earn loyalty of that kind?

  
“I didn’t know that. I thought you just cut it on a whim.”

  
Thor shrugs. “Well, I hardly would have told _you_! I was wretched about it, and you would have laughed, and Sif was convinced you planned the whole thing. She never forgave you.”

  
“The Lady Sif never forgave me for the time I put pitch in your hair and the Allfather made you cut it?” Loki asks incredulously. Sif had hated him for as long as he could remember and they'd caused each other no end of trouble over the centuries. It's bewildering to think they'd ever needed a reason to dislike each other.

  
Thor laughs. “Yes! She was always felt I needed to be protected from you.”

  
Loki stares at him, feeling oddly guilty for events centuries ago. He hadn’t realized that Thor had ever been hurt by any of Loki’s pranks, at least not until Loki himself had started making them purposefully lethal. He’d certainly never shown it. Except that time Loki had told him Father was dead and he was condemned to life in exile. Or the time Loki had faked his own death. Times.

  
Maybe it’s not the past that is weighing on Loki’s conscience, but more recent events.

“I was jealous.” he admits.

  
Thor looks at him, not knowing what he was talking about.

  
“I was jealous of the fuss mother made over your hair. She must of realized you just wanted to spend time with her, but I thought she would decide she liked you better the way everyone else had and-“

  
He’s not sure what he expects but for Thor to throw back his head and laugh is not it.

“She didn’t prefer me to you, she prefered my hair to yours!” Thor roars, shaking with laughter.

  
Loki feels foolish. His brother never used to have the ability to wrong-foot him like this. “ I just thought, you already had the friends and Father and I just… didn’t want you to take Mother too.”

  
Thor chuckles and shakes his head. “Mother loved us both, Loki. In different ways and for different things. You know she was always trying to convince Sif to give you another chance? She got Fandral and Volstagg in on it for a time as well. They used to always take your side if there was a question of whether or not you should come along or be included or anything like that. Fandral always said you were the cleverest and always made things more interesting. Volstagg just had a soft spot for you I think.”

  
Loki meets his brother’s eye.  “But, Hogun always hated me.” He points out.

  
He says it so he won't have to consider that he'd had defenders and allies in Thor's group, but never known. He, Loki , who had once thought he’d known every secret of every member of the court.

  
Thor bursts out laughing again. “He did, and he never even had a reason!” he crows, and sparks of lighting crawl up his neck to his hair.

  
It’s a sight that still feels so fundamentally odd that it’s all Loki can do not to stand and gape at him like a ninnyhammer. He has not seen his brother’s power so uninhibited in many long centuries.

  
When they had been very young Thor and Loki, had shared a nursery and run wild under the care of timid nursemaids who did not have the courage to reprimand them.

  
Thor had often thrown sparks in those days, it had been a day-to-day hazard of his childhood and more than one nanny had had to go to healers with burns or smarting welts from yanking a mid-tantrum Thor off the floor or away from a ledge or out of the path of a speeding horse.

  
And then one day the lightning had just stopped and Loki hadn’t questioned it. Which in and of itself is suspicious. Loki had questioned everything, he had driven everyone except Thor and Mother to distraction with it. That he had not questioned the disappearance of Thor’s uncontrollable power is impossible, and smacks of sorcery.

  
Thor interrupts his reverie. “I could do your hair now.” He offers equal parts hopeful and hesitant. 

Loki blinks.

  
“It’s long enough to do it in the style Mother used to show me.” There’s a pleading note to Thor’s voice. “I know you never liked to fuss with it but you could take it out right away once I finished.”

  
Loki makes a great show sighing as though he is incredibly put upon by the request, and sits down in front of Thor, who combs his fingers through Loki’s unruly waves before he sets about dividing it.

  
It is a familiar sensation for all that Frigga had not spent half as much time setting Loki’s hair as she had Thor’s.

  
Loki tilts his head forward and blinks back the burn in his eyes.

  
Even now, he has no doubt that Thor would not take advantage of this turned back to do Loki any real harm.

  
What was it that Father had said when he’d banished Thor before all this had started?

  
_You are unworthy of the love ones you had betrayed._

  
Loki had betrayed Thor more times than he could count.

  
Loki misses the Warriors Three, and even the Lady Sif. He never thought he would.

  
But, mostly he misses his mother.

 

 


	2. Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki considers Thor, and all the secrets he's always been so sure he knew.

Thor does not look like himself anymore. Loki's not exactly sure who he looks like, but he doesn't look like the brother Loki remembers anymore. He doesn't act like him either.

 

The Thor Loki remembers is trusting, thoughtless and a fool. The man, the god with his lightning and his cynicism and his cool kind judgement of Loki does not seem like the golden child who'd once picked up every snake that crossed his path and never once worried he'd be bitten.

 

That moment, in the hangar when Thor had mercilessly sought his revenge, Loki had looked at his brother and for the first time understood the desperation that had sent the man chasing after Loki these last however many years.

 

Thor had been standing right there, and Loki had missed his brother. He'd missed his stupid, sweet trusting brother who smiled no matte what-whether there was blood in his teeth, or a snake in the grass, and who forgave Loki no matter if he'd stabbed him or if he'd tried to take over his favourite realm.

 

For the first time he understood, because for the first time he wondered whether he had failed Thor as much as Thor had failed him. For the first time he tought he'd do just about anything to get the brother he remembers back. _(So he'd joined a rebellion and he'd rescued the Asgardians and destroyed Asgard and-)_

 

And he knows he never will. There have been too many loses, and too many betrayals. He has stretched Thor's capacity for forgiveness to the breaking point. And now his brother has learned a few hard lessons and throws things at Loki whenever he sees him, so as to double check whether or not he's real.

 

And through it all Thor is polite, and gentle and smiles at everyone who crosses his path. 

 

Loki watches him, waiting for him to make the same connections Loki has. To piece together the truth from what little certainties remain to them about their father.

 

Loki had weeks to do it on Sakaar, and he doesn't fault his brother for not pausing in those few whirlwind days to mull over the mess the Allfather had left in his wake. But, now they are on a spaceship on a long journey and time is one thing that they all have all too much of.

Loki cannot stop watching his brother when his back is turned. Watching for the crack, for the flaw in the facade, for the acknowledgement of what they both must know to be true.

 

                It doesn't come.

 

 Days ago, Loki would have assumed that meant there was no facade. That Thor was so ignorant of even the workings of his own magic that he had not realized the truth as Loki had.

               

Now, Loki is not so sure. Perhaps Thor is ignoring it in favour of what he views as more pressing concerns. Perhaps Thor is in denial, and has had enough of his illusions shattered that he doesn't not seek to pry this last one apart.

 

His brother has revealed himself to be cannier than he let's on, when he puts in the effort. For all that he very rarely puts in the effort.

 

 Thor's always been like that. Accepting. Forgiving. Kind, after a fashion. For all that it is a particular Asgardian brand of kindness. One that, in retrospect, their Father had never encouraged or nurtured.

 

Loki once thought it was weakness, stupidity. Now, he's not so sure.

 

He's never doubted what he knew of Thor before. He's always found him a simple puzzle, known and understood him better than he'd known himself. He had never questioned Thor's motivations or even given them much thought before. They were predictable and boring.

 

Thor was confident and happy, because his life had been easy and people were always kind to him. He was brash and brave because he was strong and difficult to hurt, and so risked nothing with his bravery or his foolishness. 

 

It had never occurred to Loki that Thor's time on Asgard had ever been anything but peaceful and pleasant.

 

But, while Loki had not been as shocked by Odin's revelation of Hela or the hateful truths she spat in their faces so gleefully (he had studied every book he could find for years, and he loved secrets he had seen the shape of something that had been removed from the histories, he just hadn't know what it had been...)

 

He had thought he'd known what their Father was capable of. That is what has caught him off guard.

 

He'd known their father to be capable of rash and cruel decisions. To be merciless in the name of honesty and justice.

 

But, when Loki had rebelled he had been dragged back in chains and then deposited in a comfortable cell.

 

He had not been cast out. As Hela had been, as Thor had been through Loki's own machinations.

 

He had always known Odin's casual thoughtless cruelty. But, he had always been convinced that Thor knew nothing of such things. It had been part and parcel of Loki's resentments.

               

Thor was Odin's favourite. It had never occurred to Loki that Odin would have turned his cruelty against his beloved firstborn. That is, against his beloved _eldest son_. (Another lie, told so often that it feels more true than the truth).

 

That all being the case there is no denying the sparks at Thor's fingers which had begun to fly as Odin's life-force had faded, or the power Thor had unleashed once Mjolnir was destroyed.

 

Odin was a tyrant; Manipulative, pitiless and determined to protect his own position at any cost. So powerful in his magics that only an offspring of his own blood could ever threaten him.   So, after the disaster of Hela he must have taken measures to ensure that there were limits to the power of his heirs.

 

                It is a conclusion Loki has turned over in his mind a thousand times, but he cannot find the fault in the logic, cannot find the lie...

Odin must have bound Thor's magic to his own life and to that damned hammer, in much the same way that he had imprisoned Hela. He had sealed part of it away, and that seal was only broken by his death, and by the destruction of the hammer.

 

He stole something of Thor in doing so. A piece of him that Thor spent almost his whole life not even knowing was missing.

 

 

Were this Loki to realize such a betrayal-

 

                ...well, there is no need to speculate. Loki has suffered such a betrayal at his father's hand. He went mad with rage and grief. He tried to prove himself. He tried to destroy one world and conquer another. He made deals and enemies and alliances.

 

                Thor has done none of these things. He has not raged or wept or screamed. He has not destroyed.

 

Loki once thought that Thor was so pleasant and good natured because he had never truly suffered. Not as Loki had.  _Another lie._ Thor suffers with silence, or a smile and a joke. He suffers in stubbornness and compassion, and gentle prodding.

 

               

 

Now that Loki thinks of it, he remembers in the long golden days of their shared childhood, that there had been a time when sparks had often flown from Thor's fingers, and he'd rock the nursery with thunder of his nightmares.

 

Then one day the sparks had stopped and Loki had never given them another thought.

 

That, even more than the coincidence of timing is what gives their father away. That, Loki, a master of magic, he who loved to unravel, and reveal those things that his family prefered to keep hidden, he who especially loved to exploit his brother's weaknesses and foibles, that he had never given a thought to this sudden change in the way his brother's magic worked was practically proof that his father had cast a spell to ensure his curious youngest son did not meddle.

 

                Father had bound Thor's magic, and he hadn't wanted anyone to look to closely at it. As he had not wanted people to look at so many things.

 

                The war with the Frost Giants, the death of an entire generation. His adoption of a little Jotun child. _So many secrets in Asgard._ So many _lies._

 

               

Loki remembers that there had been a time when Thor had often suffered nightmares. Terrible things that had set the room rattling with his thunder, and the nursemaids would cower by the door before running to find Mother would walk in and gather Thor into her arms and beckon to Loki to come sit with them, and she would tell them stories of the Valkyries and their winged steeds.

 

 Loki wonders now what those dreams had truly been, since Thor has proven himself something of a seer as well as a warrior. Loki would bet his helmet that they were prophecies, or maybe glimpses of the past.

 

Certainly, Father had never approved of them, or maybe he had just disapproved of the storms the nightmares had caused. He remembers him stalking in one night outraged at Thor's lack of control and-

 

- _and he remembers the way Thor had pulled the covers up to his chin and stared at Odin with wide too blue eyes._

 

 

And suddenly other memories:

 

Their father had not been overly interested in them when they had been small. Certainly he had loved them, and indulged them as the beloved children of his old age. As much as Loki heaps scorn upon the man, he can't deny that. But, he had been one of those adults that did not quite know what to do with children who were too young to follow a story or hold an interesting conversation.

 

Thor had been afraid of Odin when they were small, not of their Father with his twinkling single eye and long greying hair, but of the Allfather with his great golden helm and his armour. He hadn't seemed to quite connect the two, and didn't want anything to do with their Father when he was wearing his armour or his helmet. 

 

Loki recalls a crying Thor being dragged out from under his little nursery cot by an exasperated Odin determined to present his heir to a recently arrived delegation of light elves.

 

These were all in the early years, before Loki had come into his magic, or Thor had begun warrior training. When they had been very young.

 

Loki can't remember if Thor had been afraid of Odin Allfather before his sparks had disappeared, or if it had happened after.

 

He remembers there had been a longish period where Thor had made Odin chase him every time he wanted Thor to act as prince of Asgard and not just son of Odin.

 

It had become a game, as the long years had worn on and Father had become more involved in their lives. But, at first, Loki know remembers, it had been in earnest and sometimes Mother would have to come and coax Thor out from wherever he had hidden himself, or more often Odin would set Loki to the task.

 

Loki had been good at it, and proud to have this thing he shared with their father. He'd thought it was very silly the way Thor had been afraid. 

 

Now, it twists something in his chest. He feels half a traitor to be thinking these things about his father, even now after everything, he was not raised to question the Allfather, and doing so, even in the privacy of his own thoughts, feels like a risk.

 

It is only a theory.

 

But, it seems more logical to suppose that Odin was cruel to all his children, each in their own way, than to suppose that that cruelty had fallen on only the eldest and the youngest leaving the middle child unscathed.

 

It's not impossible of course. Hela and Loki both resemble Odin as he himself once was in his youth, and Thor, with his smiles and his blonde hair (and his seemingly prophetic dreams) favoured Frigga.

 

But, still, the question lingers and nags at Loki.

 

 

 

He finds Heimdall one night, standing at the great window near Thor's make shift throne and staring out into the cosmos as he once had during his centuries long vigil on the Bifrost.

 

Loki wanders over. He notices that Heimdall is still gripping the great sword that had controlled that now shattered bridge.

 

“You have a question, Trickster.” Heimdall tellls him. “Ask.”

 

Loki hesitates. There's always been something about Heimdall that puts him on the back foot. “You knew, didn't you? About Hela, and the war and the whole dreadful business.”

 

Heimdall was, after all about the same age as Hela. One of the few Asgardians of that age that had been still living.

 

It seems so obvious now, that missing generation. The one's who had been killed in the wars of conquest, and then in the civil war.  The ones Hela no doubt had called friends, and had done her best to resurrect.

 

“You have always been one to waste your words asking questions you already know the answers to.” Heimdal scolds.

 

Loki grits his teeth. Heimdall has never been what you'd call sociable, though in retrospect he'd always had a soft spot for Thor, in his own way.  He's never been fond of Loki.

 

“Do you think the Allfather was right?” Loki asks. “To do what he did? Imprisoning Hela and erasing the unpleasant parts of Asgard's history.”

 

Heimdalll shifts into his usual pose of relaxed attention as he stares out at the stars.

 

“Asgard has ever been a warrior people. But, you have never suffered a war, not like there once were. You don't know what it was like. Your father wanted peace, so he ensured that there would be peace, and now we are a people where most have known nothing but peace all their lives.   You and your brother trained in weapons almost from the time you have walked, but you are warriors of a new kind. You look at what your father did and you shudder at the horror instead of cheering at the glory.”

 

“Odin banished Thor for being to bloodthirsty, and when he did so he stripped him of his power.”  Loki points out. 

 

“Only most of it, it was beyond even the power of the Allfather to truly remove such magic as your brother possesses.”

 

“Because it is innate. Unlearned.” Loki states. “Like yours.”

 

Heimdall glances at him, and then blinks his gaze back to the stars. “Again, you tell me things you believe you already know.”

 

Loki swallows. “Could Father have stripped you of your power? As he did Thor when he banished him?” 

 

Heimdall shifts and settles himself back into his habitual pose of relaxed attention as he surveyed the stars.

 

“He and I shared no bond of blood. But, the Allfather's power was very great. He could have done it but not without inflicting great harm on me.”

 

“He did it without harming Thor.” Loki points out.

  
  
“He did not _truly_ strip Thor of his power, as well you know.”

 

“But, he took it from him all the same.”

 

“The bond of blood allowed for it, I suppose. I am no master of magic Loki, what is it your truly want to ask?”

 

“Father locked away Thor's power in that damned hammer when he was a child, didn't he? He bound the spell to his own life-force, so like Hela, Thor's true strength was only unleashed when our father died.”

 

Heimdall sighs. “Another question you think you know the answer to.” He rolls his eyes and looks at Loki scornfully. “Not everyone is as you are. The king wanted peace, so he ensured it.”

 

“That’s not an answer,  Gatekeeper.” Loki hisses.

 

“And who are you, Frost Giant, that you think you may command me to answer you?” Heimdall replies smugly. "You are not my king, whose secrets I vowed to keep." 

 

“Odin is dead!” Loki yells. “What is there to be gained by keeping the old man’s secrets?”

 

Heimdall smiles. “Even so, why would I tell them to you? Traitor twice-over that you are.”

 

Loki scoffs and turns away in disgust only to find Thor standing at the base of the dias looking up at them.

 

“Heimdall?” The God of Thunder asks. “Is everything all right here?”

 

Heimdall grins. “Your brother is always trying to challenge me to a contest of wits. But, I don’t play those sorts of games.”

 

Thor nods. “Ah. Loki, if you need something to do go spar with the Valkyrie. Like you, she is prone to destruction when she is idle.”

 

Loki stares at his brother, studying his face, and then nods. “As you wish.”  He brushes past Thor and pretends he cannot feel the eyes of the hall on him.

 

He hears his brother murmur to the Gatekeeper. “What was he after?” and Heimdall’s reply. “Nothing to concern you, my King. He'll get no answers from me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this is mostly Thor from Loki's perspective. Nothing happens, except you learn about his theories. Next chapter is Heimdall POV and you'll learn something adjacent to the truth. Thanks to everyone who kudos-ed and especially commented! It really motivates me to keep writing.


	3. Conversations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heimdall talks to Thor, and tells the truth or at least part of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for brief non-specific mentions of child abuse and harm to children
> 
> This chapter took forever to write.

Thor has always been Heimdall’s favourite.

 

Not that it was ever much of a choice, they were alike in certain ineffable important ways that have to do with souls and magic and things that people like Loki and Odin who think themselves incredibly clever can’t pick apart and so dismiss out of hand.

 

Though now Thor wins by default, since none of the other young noble children of his age are still alive. Except Loki, who has annoyed Heimdall since the day he’d marched down the rainbow bridge and managed to look down on the Gatekeeper while being 3 feet shorter than him.

 

Unlike Loki, who pesters Heimdall constantly now that he’s caught the wind of blood or pain he might be able to exploit, the Gatekeeper has to go looking for his King.

 

Heimdall finds Thor in his quarters, sitting on the bed, looking- not small, Thor will never look small again, but…uncertain and reminiscent of when he was young and used to come to Heimdall for help.

 

Thor looks up at Heimdall where he stands in the door and he sighs. He looks tired and more hopeless than the Gatekeeper would have thought possible five mortal years ago.

 

“So,” Thor says. “Loki has been asking questions?”

 

“Yes, my King.”

 

“What does he want to know?”

 

“He wants to know about your powers and the hammer and why you are now more powerful than you were mere days ago.”

 

Thor closes his eye, and he looks like his father. “And what have you told him?”

 

“Nothing, he hadn’t already guessed. You know I’ll keep your secrets my King.”

 

Thor smiles, and opens his eye to look up at Heimdall gratefully. And it’s a look that is so familiar and so dear to Heimdall that he thinks he might have to turn away because the pain of those happy memories burns him worse than all the carnage he’s seen. 

 

“You always have.” Thor agrees. “Though my being your King has nothing to do with it.”

 

Heimdall shrugs. “You and I have always understood one another.”

 

Thor’s smile falls to something like a grimace and he scrubs his hands across his face. “So, Loki is curious about my powers and Mjolnir. That can’t be good.” He stares ahead blankly for a moment.

 

“I don’t believe it is.” Heimdall agrees.

 

Thor pauses. “You know what happened with the hammer and my powers, don’t you?”

 

Heimdall glances at him. “Of course…Don’t you?”

 

Thor hesitates. “Yes, I think I’ve put the pieces together. Nothing out of character for Father, or particularly shocking given...well, everything.” Thor makes a dismissive gesture. “I was too young, too temperamental and too powerful so Father, quite reasonably, put limits on my power though enchantment of some kind.”

 

Heimdall nods. “He didn’t remove your power, he simply bound it to Mjolnir, so you could not use it without the hammer- like building a wall with a gate in around a treasure.”

 

“Ah. And that was why he was able to strip me of my powers so easily to banish me. They were already separate from me. All he had to do was lock the gate.”

 

“In a way. And not all of them, you still summoned storms in your mortal form.” Heimdall reminds him.

 

Thor nods. “Of course.” 

 

There is a long pause and Heimdall feels he should defend Odin, who was once his king and who rightly or wrongly, Heimdall had once trusted completely.

 

“Odin did what he thought was best.” Is all he can think of to say.

 

Thor shrugs. “I was a brash impulsive fool. I wouldn’t have let me have such power either.”

 

Heimdall pokes him in annoyance. “You’ve never been a fool.”

 

Thor raises his eyebrows. “Not even when I nearly got us all killed by going to Jotunheim?”

 

Heimdall huffs. “You were foolish. But you were never a fool.” He insists stubbornly.

 

Thor chuckles and then the smile fades. “What do you think the odds are that Loki will let this go?”

 

Heimdall just looks at his young king.

 

“Zero. Of course.” Thor answers his own question. “GHARGH! And I can’t just _tell_ him, because he’d want to pick all apart the how and the why and the whole sordid business- As if Father isn’t dead, as if Father being dead isn’t partly Loki’s fault. Not to mention-“

 

“He’d try to recreate the spell the next time the two of you have one of your little spats.” Heimdall finishes the sentence for him.

 

Thor points at him. “EXACTLY!”  Lightning crackles across his knuckles and crawls up his arms. “It didn’t happen to him, it happened to me, so I should be able to decide whether or not it matters.” The lightning dances out of his one good eye.

 

Thor lies back onto his bed and stares at the ceiling. “But if he were seeking to depose me he would have done so by now.  Wouldn’t he? Patience is after all not his strong suit.”

 

“It hasn’t been lately, no.” Heimdall says instead of the dozen other remarks he’d like to make. “But, he waited years in festering hatred before he moved against you the first time.”

 

Thor turns his head to look at Heimdall in surprise. “Hogun and Sif always warned me about him, but you never said a word.”

 

Heimdall shifts and taps the corner of his eye. “That doesn’t mean I did not see, my king.”

 

Thor smiles at the poor joke, and turns to stare at the ceiling. “Did he always hate me?” he asks in a small voice. “Were all those happy times just…lies?”

 

Heimdall swallows what he wants to say, which is that Thor can make happy memories out of the worst of times because he has a sweetness to his soul that Heimdall cherishes. He wants to say that two things may exist in a person at once and those happy memories may have been real even as Loki sharpened his knives and laughed at his brother behind his back.

 

Instead he chooses his words carefully, measuring the truth to fit the moment, as he’s always done.

 

“In my experience, you do not hurt a person in so many terrible ways if you love them.” He says sofly. 

 

“It wasn’t always like that. Much of what happened is my fault.”

 

“You don’t repeatedly stab a person without provocation if you love them.” Heimdall snaps, getting specific.

 

Thor cranes his neck to look at Heimdall, surprised at the tone.

 

Heimdall looks at him, and sees the chubby legged toddler rushing down the rainbow bridge determined to find where his father was constantly disappearing off to.

 

Heimdall still doesn’t know how Thor had managed to get out of the palace and all the way to edge of Asgard without being stopped when he had been too young to speak properly.

 

In the present, the adult Thor frowns. “He never meant it. He was just being Loki, we were always competitive.”

 

Heimdall bites his tongue and doesn’t point out that Thor’s competitiveness had manifested itself in constantly besting his brother in the training yards and making snide comments, whereas Loki’s had been dangerous spells, ambush attacks when Thor least expected it and ultimately a palace coup.

 

Heimdall shakes his head.  “He’s a fool” He says. It  is all the truth the moment can contain.

 

 The self-involved and largely self-inflicted tragedy of Asgard’s younger prince had never interested him. He’d seen it play out before on a thousand other different worlds and with better actors, too. Loki, for all his confidence, had never been as good at lying as he thought. Especially not to Heimdall, who saw almost everything and had spent the better part of his life acting as Odin’s righ hand, and Odin was exceptionally good at lying. It had always been so insulting, that Loki thought Heimdall would be taken in by his childish attempts at manipulation.   

 

Thor grins. “No _, I’m_ the fool. Everyone always said so.”

 

Heimdall remembers a snot and tear streaked Thor hiding in the guardhouse weeping at his own perceived stupidity. Heimdall hadn’t even had words to be able to deny it for the little prince, because Heimdall was no scholar or tactician. He had his great magical power and his loyalty, and for that he was renowned, but no one had ever called him clever or sharp. He had never learned the subjects that Thor struggled in, and who was the Gatekeeper to say whether or not a boy was clever or stupid.

 

He had done his best to comfort his future king, showed him visions of far off worlds under strangely coloured skies. He had told him new stories of the Valkyrie, which Thor was always desperate for more of, and had undone the careful braids in Thor’s long hair with the explaination that the Valkyrie wore their long hair lose when streaming behind them like banner they rode into battle. By the end of the afternoon Thor had happily headed back to the palace with his earlier distress completely forgotten.

 

Heimdall hadn’t ever forgotten, the memory still makes him want to grind his teeth. It’s one of his regrets. He should have told the boy that he was clever. What did Odin know about it, after all?

  
“If you are a fool that is only because you posess a brand of wisdom that people like your brother covet but cannot learn in books.” Heimdall snarls.

 

Thor chuckles. “Why gatekeeper, I had no idea you were so protective of me.”

 

Heimdall steps forward and sits next to Thor on the bed. He reaches out and touches his king’s arm and for a second shares his vision. The universe at he could see it. He lets go and let’s the vision recede. Thor is the only one who can see as Heimdall does, even if it is only when Heimdall chooses to share his power with him.  

 

“Our magics are of a kind.” Heimdall reminds Thor. “Why shouldn’t you be my favourite?”

 

Thor rolls his eye and turns away. “You’re the one who really saved Asgard, I just got them off that doomed world, but Hela would have killed them long before I got there if it hadn’t been for you.”

 

Heimdall has things he wishes he could say. “I’ve never cared much for glory. They’re alive. All would have been lost if you had not returned.”

 

“And if Loki had not returned.”

 

It’s Heimdall who rolls his eyes this time. Thor snickers at him.

 

“You are so determined to dislike him!”

 

“He’s never given me a reason to _like_ him.”

 

“I’m sure that’s not true, and anyway, whatever his flaws he’s not any worse than Father. And you were always loyal to him.”

 

 _And Loki dares call his brother a fool._ Heimdall grits his teeth. Odin had been complicated, but Heimdall had understood him, in his own way. “Your father made the choices he could live with, even if they were wrong. He stopped the wars. He stopped Hela. That was enough for me, for a time.”

 

Thor looks at him with a studied blankness. “But, he also _started_ those wars.”

 

Heimdall is glad that Thor cannot understand the loyalty he has to Odin, because it is a loyalty born of battlefields and massacres and blood. More than anything it is born from the memory of half-empty Asgard, with it’s young warriors slaughtered by Hela and by Jotunns and the gloom of mourning poisoning everything, as they all looked desperately to their king to fix it.

 

If all goes as they hope, in time the survivors of Asgard will no doubt be as blindly loyal to Thor as Heimdall once was to Odin, though Heimdall doubts it would please Thor to hear that.

 

Heimdall rolls his eyes. “Every Allfather has fought wars of conquest, some bloodier than others. You think the Dark Elves had no cause to seek vengeance against your grandfather? Odin Borson was the only one to ever stop the wars completely. At the time that seemed like something beyond grace, for all it seems…an _inadequate_ concession now.”

 

Thor sits up again. “You know what I like most about Midgardians is the way they have answers to questions it would never occur to an Asgardian to ask. They have more ideas than you or I could ever dream of and their lives are so brief and there are so many of them. No problem is ever abandoned no matter how many solutions have already been discovered, because in a year or two years or a hundred someone else will come along with something that works _better_. Things move forward and they change so quickly.”

 

Heimdall frowns at his king wondering where he’s going with this.

 

“There aren’t even many kings on Midgard anymore. It’s considered tyranny, and unjust.” Thor tells him earnestly.

 

“I know.”

 

“And there are places where to raise a hand to a child in any way is considered the basest form of weakness.” He looks at Heimdall, a challenge in his eyes.   
  


 

 Thor could enrage his father like no one else, maybe because Thor had never learned fear him the way ordinary beings did. Or, had never allowed whatever fear he, may or may not have, felt to control his actions. Or maybe it was because for the first years of his life he alone on Asgard had had the raw strength to match the old man, for all that he’d been a toddler.

 

Their shouting matches were loud and notorious, and had a tendency to escalate. No one else dared raise their voice to the Allfather, except perhaps for Frigga who had rarely needed to. 

 

Heimdall had seen a bruise or two on the boy, but nothing egregious.

 

“Do not over idealize the mortals; not very long ago the Midgardians were still killing each other in horrifically creative ways- like, tying people to trees with their own entrails and then leaving them for the birds.” Heimdall reminds him.

 

“They were fiendishly creative about that for long time.” Thor acknowledges before beaming at Heimdall. “But look at them now!”

 

Heimdall is not sure he shares Thor’s optimism, but it is true humans kill each other in quicker more straight forward ways these days, and torturing an enemy to death was no seen as shameful instead of as public entertainment. After all the hacking, dismemberment and disembowelling Heimdall has witnessed over the years bullets do seem like a very clean death.  

 

“They have come a long ways.” Heimdall agrees. “I remember you nearly deafened me when I accidentally showed you a Midgardian decapitation and you screamed at all the blood.”

 

Thor bellows out a surprised laugh. “I had forgotten that! I used to run away and make you show me whatever you were observing in the universe.”

 

“Your mother wasn’t happy about that. You cried for days when I told you you couldn’t save Sigurd from his mortal fate.”

 

“Well, he’d killed a dragon! An impressive feat for a Midgardian, and he was my brother, after a fashion, and Loki at that point was too small for me to play with.”

 

“It was not unreasonable of your mother to prevent you from accidentally crushing your little brother's skull.” Heimdall points out dryly. "For all that it might have saved us all some trouble in the long run..." 

 

Thor pauses, the smiles slipping off his face and he looks at Heimdall worriedly. “I think I remember what happened with Father and my powers and what he did to  bind them, but…My memory of those years is not....specific, I’m not sure what came before or what after...it’s all...jumbled.”

 

“You were very young. I’m surprised you remember at all.”

 

He’s watching Heimdall, with his head tilted, as though contemplating something.  “Is there something you remember that you think I need to know?”

 

Heimdall remembers being summoned to the palace in the dark of night many hundreds of years ago. Another terrible lightning storm was rocking the Realm Eternal and he’d known it was Thor’s growing and increasingly uncontrollable powers.

 

He’d arrived in the throne room to find the King looking furious, the Queen with her lips pressed into a hard thin line, and Thor chained at the base of the throne and wailing inconsolably as the lightning arced around him.

 

Heimdall had been summoned because his magic was, despite appearances, similar to Thor’s and ruled by a different set of rules than the seidr. They had needed his help to complete this magic. Odin couldn't do it alone and Frigga's seidr wouldn't hold. It had been Heimdall who had truly bound the magic of that child into the mighty hammer Mjolnir.

Heimdall remembers the way Thor had screamed and sobbed at the same time, trying to tear the chains out of the floor to escape the spell that had obviously hurt, despite the Allfather’s assurances to the contrary.

 

Heimdall considers Thor's question. 

 

Thor had been very young, when the spell was cast. Pain fades with time. The storms had nearly cracked the vault of the heavens or split the grounds beneath his feet, and Heimdall knew the burdern that their particular breed of magic could be. As much as it was wrong to steal something from Thor that was intrinsic to his very self, it had also freed him of the weight that such responsibilities bring. Thor had never come to fear his strength or resent it. It was never out of his control. He hadn’t even known to miss it until recently.

 

“No, my King. I think you understand as much as you need to.” Heimdall says at last, and it's true enough. 

Thor looks at him thoughtfully, and then nods. "Alright."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:  
> 1\. Thor being able to say "Heimdall help me see!" (or whatever the specific line was) was a very jarring moment of 'I'm sorry he can DO that?' for me in terms of what Thor's previously established powers are, so this is kind of about...that? Since it seems to indicate that Heimdall and Thor are magically linked.   
> 2\. Sigurd is the Norse equivalent of Siegmund who rescues Brunhilde in the Germanic legend, and is a descendant of   
> Odin. The story ends with everyone getting brutally killed. It's also a legend where Odin is super manipulative and using humans as pawns for his own ends.   
> 3\. In terms of timeline I'm saying that Heimdall was the Asgardian equivalent of late teens early twenties when he met toddler Thor on the run from his nannies and looking for his dad.   
> 4\. Heimdall's protectiveness of Thor definitely is influenced by his own guilt in being a perpetrator of the enchantment that Odin put on his son.
> 
> Let me know if you guys like it! I tried really hard to get Heimdall right! Comments definitely help motivate me to keep writing. Next chapter will be Thor and Loki *gasp* talking to each other!


	4. Reconciliation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor and Loki talk

“Did Mjolnir summon lightning before I wielded her?” Thor asks, breaking Heimdall’s reverie and bringing him back to the present.

 

Heimdall suppresses a smile. “You’re doing what your brother always does: asking questions you already know the answer to.”

 

 Thor sighs. “Father is dead. Asgard is gone. Why does it matter what happened millennia ago, when it may or may not have been the right choice?”

 

Heimdall shrugs. “Mortals set high value in truth.”

 

Thor scoffs. “They pretend to but they love truth no more than we do.”

 

Heimdall considers it. “We could concoct a version of the story that your brother would prefer to the truth.”

 

“And what would that be? Father shackled my magic to protect me from harming myself with it?”

 

“You were frightened by the lightning you couldn’t control. Your Father could not abide weakness and controlled it for you so you wouldn’t fuss about it.”

 

“We tell Loki father enchanted me to make me stop crying and then...what? Forgot about it?”

 

“Then he realized it made you easier to control, and made it simpler for you to learn how to harness your strength and so...left things as they were.”

 

“That’s a ridiculous story.” Thor scoffs. 

 

“Your brother likes tales in which your father is a thoughtless villain, and you are the hapless noble hearted pawn.” Heimdall points out. 

 

Thor blinks. “I had no idea your opinion of my brother was so low.”

 

Heimdall’s lip curled. “He demanded loyalty from me which he did not earn. His search for petty vengeance has lost innumerable lives. He banished me, and left our realm vulnerable.”

 

Heimdall considers leaving this at a half-truth, but what would be the point?

 

“He torments you and calls it play. He hurts you and calls it jokes.” Heimdall shakes his head. “I remember when you believed he was dead. Both times. How it haunted you and tore at you. The first time was no fault of his, but the second? ... To inflict that sort of heartless agony onto someone is not love.”

 

He has never before admitted how close to his heart he has held Thor. But, it is the truth, and Thor has lost so much. He deserves to know that Heimdall has cherished him from the moment he came running into the Gatehouse on fat baby legs trailing a spit covered wall hanging he’d acquired somewhere.

 

 Thor looks at Heimdall very seriously. "It's no worse than anything I've done. If I am redeemable, than so is Loki.” 

 

“You did not kill guards for sport.” Heimdall snarls. 

 

“Neither did Loki!” Thor shouts

 

“The guards who died in the treasure vault on the day of the coronation were nothing more than casualties of something your brother considered a joke.”

 

Thor pauses. “Even so. He saved us. I’m sure I’ve piled up more bodies than you and Loki put together.”

 

Heimdall waves his hand dismissing the whole argument. He wants to say bloodshed has nothing to with anything. He is an Asgardian from before the Civil War, death is nothing to him.

 

"Do as you wish. You are my king and I will support you, whatever you chose to do." 

 

 Thor smiles, that bright sunshine smile that Heimdall has treasured for a millenia. "I thank you for your trust and your loyalty Heimdall." 

 

Heimdall shrugs. "Well, you've earned it." 

 

 

 

 

Loki wanders into Thor bedchamber, and Thor looks at him.

 

“You really must stop pestering Heimdall. The man wants nothing more than to throw you into the vacuum of space.” Thor tells him without inflection. 

 

Loki scoffs. “You’d never let him.”

 

Thor looks at him . “If he decided to do it, it would be done before I had time to blink.”

 

Loki waves a hand conceding the point.

 

“I don’t know what your obsession with Mjolnir is anyway.” Thor growls. “You never cared when it was whole.”

 

Loki rolls his eyes. “I never cared where you could see. Of course I cared that you had the great war hammer and I had…nothing.”

 

Thor grits his teeth. “I am tired of this song, brother. It’s the only one you ever sing. I would have thought you’d be pleased: I have nothing now either.”

 

Loki wants to shake his brother. He wants to shake himself. He doesn’t know how to fix it.

 

“It’s not about the damn hammer, Thor!” he snarls. “And you know it.”

 

Thor just looks tired. “Well, you can’t expect me to tell you anything about the magic. Not with our current track record. I do that and Heimdall throws _both_ of us out the damn window.”  

 

Loki looks at Thor. They were young together once. Thor had trusted everyone. Even obviously untrustworthy Midgardians who cut each others heads off. 

 

“It’s about Father.” Loki admits. 

 

“Isn’t everything?” Thoe mutters in exasperation. 

 

Loki gives Thor a look. Thor looks unrepentant. “Well, isn’t it? Especially when it comes to you.”

 

“I’m serious Thor.”

 

“As am I.”

 

Loki sighs and sits down. He eyes Thor.

 

“Do you want to braid my hair?”

 

Thor looks at him. “Is this some ploy to keep me near you while you talk at me?”

 

Loki opts for honesty. “Yes, but you can do it however you like.”

 

Thor sighs very dramatically and scooches over to sit next to Loki.

 

“It was wrong.” Loki blurts out. “What he did.”

 

Thor’s hands don’t pause as he divides Loki’s hair. “What was wrong, Loki? When it comes to Father you’ll have to be more specific. There’s just so _much_ to choose from.”

 

“What he did to you.”

 

Thor is quiet for a moment, pinning pieces of Loki’s hair out of the way as he fiddles with other bits.

 

“What he did to both of us.” Thor finally murmurs.

 

Loki winces. “What he did to me was not the same.”

 

Thor hums. “I suppose this is where you tell me it was worse?”

 

“No. Just different. Less…invasive.” Loki grits his teeth at the sharp sting of a spark crackling off his brother’s knuckle.

 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

“That's true." Loki admits. "Heimdall won’t crack and you… you don’t trust me enough to tell me.”

 

“A hard lesson it has taken me a long time to learn.”

 

Loki is quiet. “I thought we had started to mend things between us.”

 

Thor hums. “What is there to mend? I thought we were the best of friends, but you thought you were nothing more than my shadow. We’re starting over. It will take time.”

 

Loki sighs, but sits with his back to his brother and lets him comb it out. “Why do you have the tools to constantly be doing hair at a moments notice?”

 

Thor doesn’t say anything for a moment. “I’m still in the habit of carrying the tools. I keep forgetting.”

 

“Oh.”

 

There’s something about sitting in silence that Loki has never been good at. Words are his weapons, and his shields. He needs to fill the emptiness, and he did come here to talk after all.

 

“I thought I knew him better than you.” He finally admits. “Father, I mean.”

 

Thor laughs. He throws back his head and guffaws. Loki hunches his shoulders in embarrassment, and then turns to look as Thor just keeps laughing.

 

He laughs so hard there are fat tears running down his cheeks and Loki is afraid his brother’s mind has finally cracked under the strain of always being polite and cheerful.

 

Finally, Thor catches his breath. “You say that, after spending the last ten years whining about how he favoured me?”

 

“That was the _point_. I thought you didn’t know what he truly was. That he favoured you and so you never saw the sides of him that I did. But, I was wrong, wasn’t I? In truth there were sides to him that you saw and I did not, and sides that I saw that you did not.”

 

Thor rolls his eyes. “Yes, Loki, that is how relationships among different people work.” He says with false patience as though he’s talking to a not very bright child. “Next you'll say you thought that Sif was always as nasty to me as she was to you?”

 

Loki huffs. “That’s not the point!” he protests, punching the bed childishly and immediately feeling embarrassed about it.

 

Thor raises an eyebrow at him.

 

“It’s not that I am deluded by Father, or clinging to a false memory of who he was.” Thor explains. “I am well aware he was not who he pretended to be, but I think that the front he put on was the person he truly desired to become.”

 

“Wishing to be different has never accomplished anything.”

 

“I suppose so, but I have to look at it from his perspective.”

 

“No you don’t.”

 

“Yes, I do, because if I didn’t have to take the time to understand his motives, than I am not required to care about yours, and I don’t think I could forgive you, if that were the case.”

 

“I…”

 

“It broke my heart, you know, when you died. Both times. It’s part of why Heimdall is so angry with you. The first time, well, that wasn’t your fault and I didn’t consider what you did beforehand to be a true indicator of your feelings. You were angry and hurt and had been lied to. Sif and Hogun had both warned me that I was wrong about how things were between us. That you were angry at me but pretending not to be. But, I didn't see it, because I was too much an arrogant selfish fool.”

 

Loki turns away and hunches his shoulders. “If you were than so was I, only a thousand times worse.”

 

Thor hums and begins fiddling with Loki’s hair again. “Well, we didn’t massacre large segments of the galaxy, so we’re still doing better than Hela.”

 

“That’s a very low bar, Thor.”

 

“In my experience Loki, satisfaction in life is all about setting acheivable goals. It’s not something you’ve ever really grasped.”

 

Loki snorts.

 

“Anyway, given Hela’s…track-record I can’t fault Father for making sure I wasn’t powerful enough to crack the vault of the Asgardian heavens or smash the pillars she rested on.”

 

Loki rolls his eyes. “So you’re saying you deserved it? How could you have deserved it! You were a tiny child!”

 

“A tiny child with power like Heimdall’s and such power can be dangerous. I was already afraid of my powers before Father sealed them away, can you imagine what sort of a wreck I’d have become if I’d had them? I’d either have ended up an impossible to control monster like our sister or I’d have been terrified of myself and my powers would have gone unused and uncontrolled. It was an effective solution, whatever else you have to say about it.”

 

Loki grit his teeth. “Just once I wish you wouldn’t forgive him! He’s a monster!”

 

Thor chuckles. “You know Sif, Jane and Heimdall have all said the same thing about _you_. " Thor is silent for a moment, his hands moving gently through Loki's hair. "There are so many stories on Midgard because there are so many people. There are lots of stories about people like us. Powerful people who love each other and betray each other and try to reconcile their differences.”

 

“And how do those stories end?" Lokis asks, not really interested in the answer. 

 

“Depends on what type of story it is. " 

 

“Well, your favourite one, how does it end?”

 

“They ride off into the sunset, having lost the treasure, but saved the city and forgiven each other.” Thor replies. 

 

“That sounds a bit like us, doesn’t it?”

 

“No, you are much crueler than the men in that story.”

 

Loki doesn’t know what to say to that. 

 

“Besides,” Thor adds. “You don’t sing.”

 

Loki laughs. “Are you nearly done with my hair?”

 

He doesn’t wait for an answer and stands up to look in the mirror. He can’t help the bark of laughter that jolts out of him when he sees his reflection. Thor has done his best to pin Loki’s hair up in the elaborate coiffure of a noble Asgardian lady of the court.

 

Loki turns to look at Thor, who’s trying very hard not to smile.

 

“You know I think I pull it off.”

 

Thor grins.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How did this chapter take so long to write? Probably because I have a real hard time imagining a scenario where these two would ever actually talk to each other in a straight forwrd and honest way. Sorry guys. Here it is, as good as it's gonna get.

**Author's Note:**

> Sibling relationships are complicated, especially when you're really close and really close in age.
> 
> I may be projecting a bit on these two.


End file.
